Adrift between symposia and seminars, a drizzle of reverie on Bow Street, aimless nostalgia graying in droplets of fog. At the corner of Arrow the campanile of St. Paul’s looming through the mist, Italianate monolith, blood- red brick.

this was where you fell, Marco, a bluster of a June day, 1957, the day the scaffolding betrayed you, left you hanging to mock gravity, the split second of wonder before the inevitable.

I stare up, watch the swallows and wrens loop and hover about the belfry clock, the minute hand inches toward the hour, the bells toll three, the birds whoosh off at the plangent peal.

that was when you fell, after sweaty hours sandblasting the brick, flailing the humid air, wingless against the corkscrew dive.

I stare down at the concrete where your blood once pooled – so where were the winged angels to waft you safely to ground?

they said your head hit first, that the sound was one nobody would want to hear again.

And tonight we will be dining and dancing – a cloudburst of reminiscence for us who have survived the thunder of a half century, the one lost to you in a heart’s single beat, a rogue gust of hot wind.

in the class book an asterisk, a terse footnote: Mark Brennan – died June 17, 1957

About the Author

Krikor Der Hohannesian lives in Medford, MA. His poems have appeared in over 150 literary journals including The Evansville Review, The South Carolina Review, Atlanta Review, Louisiana Literature, Connecticut Review and Natural Bridge. He is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of two chapbooks,“Ghosts and Whispers” (Finishing Line Press, 2010) and “Refuge in the Shadows” (Cervena Barva Press, 2013). “Ghosts and Whispers” was a finalist for the Mass Book awards poetry category in 2011.